“We’re not going to play a winning hand every day.” John Paulson

1. Q3 GDP to Take a Major Hit from Harvey — Hurricane Harvey is expected to be one of the costliest disasters in postwar U.S. history, and a likely drag on third-quarter economic growth by a full percentage point, Goldman Sachs said in a weekend research note. Meanwhile, Hurricane Irma has knocked out power to nearly 4M homes and businesses in Florida, threatening millions more as it creeps up the state’s west coast. While the storm made landfall as a Category 4, it has weakened to a Category 1.
2. Daimler Next to Jump on EV Bandwagon — Mercedes-Benz will offer electric versions of all its models by 2022, according to parent company Daimler (OTCPK:DDAIF), which said it would similarly convert its Smart city car brand to become fully electric. Also, China is developing a timetable to end gas and diesel auto sales, but it hasn’t delineated a timeframe like the U.K. and France, which will ban the vehicles by 2040. Chinese-owned carmaker Volvo (OTCPK:GELYY) confirmed in July that all its new car models would have an electric motor from 2019.
3. Equifax CEO to Testify before House Panel on Hacking — Equifax (NYSE:EFX) CEO Richard Smith will testify about the company’s massive data breach at an Oct. 3 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Digital Commerce Consumer Protection, according to the committee’s chairman and another member. Since the attack, Symantec’s (NASDAQ:SYMC) LifeLock has seen six times its normal web traffic, and signups per hour are up ten folds.
4. AAII Weekly Sentiment Swing Back in Bull Camp — courtesy of BIG, this week’s survey showed a surge in optimism as the percentage of investors putting themselves in the bullish camp rose from 29.28% up to 41.29%. That’s the largest one-week increase in bullish sentiment since the end of April and the highest weekly print since January.

From last week’s level of 34.98%, bearish sentiment cratered to 21.97%. The last time bearish sentiment was this low was in early April.

5. China Moves to Halt Exchange Bitcoin — Chinese policy makers will move quickly on a previously reported plan to end exchange trading, their most far-reaching measure to rein in the growth of cryptocurrencies. China’s crackdown, which includes a ban on initial coin offerings announced last week, has fueled an abrupt reversal in bitcoin after the digital currency soared more than 700 percent in the 12 months through August. BTC China, one of the country’s largest cryptocurrency venues, said it would stop handling trades by month-end.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com: